Without remorse - Tom Clancy [50]
Dumb, Kelly thought. Very dumb to draw attention to yourself that way. When you do dangerous things, you conceal your identity, conceal your very presence, and always leave yourself with at least one route of escape.
'It's amazing they can get away with this,' Kelly whispered to himself.
'Huh?' Pam's head turned.
'They're so stupid.' Kelly waved at the dealer near the corner. 'Even if the cops don't do anything, what if somebody decides to - I mean, he's holding a lot of money, right?'
'Probably a thousand, maybe two thousand,' Pam replied.
'So what if somebody tries to rob him?'
'It happens, but he's carrying a gun, too, and if anyone tries - '
'Oh - the guy in the doorway?'
'He's the real dealer, Kelly. Didn't you know that? They guy in the shirt is his lieutenant. He's the guy who does the actual - what do you call it?'
'Transaction,' Kelly replied dryly, reminding himself that he'd failed to spot something, knowing that he'd allowed his pride to overcome his caution. Not a good habit, he told himself.
Pam nodded. 'That's right. Watch - watch him now.'
Sure enough, Kelly saw what he now realized was the full transaction. Someone in a car - another visitor from the suburbs, Kelly thought - handed over his money (an assumption, since Kelly couldn't really see, but surely it wasn't a Bank Americard). The lieutenant reached inside the shirt and handed something back. As the car pulled off, the one in the flamboyant shirt moved across the sidewalk, and in shadows that Kelly's eyes could not quite penetrate there was another exchange.
'Oh, I get it. The lieutenant holds the drugs and makes the exchange, but he gives the money to his boss. The boss holds the earnings, but he also has a gun to make sure nothing goes wrong. They're not as dumb as I thought they were.'
'They're smart enough.'
Kelly nodded and made a mental note, chastising himself for having made at least two wrong assumptions. But that's why you did reconnaissance, after all.
Let's not get too comfortable, Kelly, he told himself. Now you know that there's two bad guys up there, one armed and well concealed in that doorway. He settled in his seat and locked his eyes on the potential threat, watching for patterns of activity. The one in the doorway would be the real target. The misnamed 'lieutenant' was just a hireling, maybe an apprentice, undoubtedly expendable, living on crumbs or commission. The one he could just barely see was the real enemy. And that fit the time-honored pattern, didn't it? He smiled, remembering a regional political officer for the NVA. That job had even carried a code name. ermine coat. Four days they'd stalked that bastard, after they'd positively identified him, just to make sure he was the one, then to learn his habits, and determine the best possible way to punch his ticket. Kelly would never forget the look on the man's face when the bullet entered his chest. Then their three-mile run to the LZ, while the NVA's reaction team headed in the wrong direction because of the misleading pyro-charge he'd set up.
What if that man in the shadows was his target? How would he do it? It was an interesting mental game. The feeling was surprisingly godlike. He felt like an eagle, watching, cataloging, but above it all, a predator at the top of the food chain, not hungry now, riding the thermals over them.
He smiled, ignoring the warnings that the combat-experienced part of his brain was beginning to generate.
Hmm. He hadn't seen that car before. It was a muscle car, a Plymouth Roadrunner, red as a candy apple, half a block away. There was something odd about the way it -
'Kelly ...' Pam suddenly tensed in her seat.
'What is it?' His hand found the .45 and loosened it in the holster just a millimeter or so, taking comfort from the worn wooden grips. But the fact that he'd reached for it, and the fact that he'd felt a sudden need for that comfort, were a message that his mind could not ignore. The cautious part of his brain began